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Understanding Career Mobility of Professors: Does Foreign-Born Status Matter?

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to seek to understand the mobility patterns of faculty members, with particular attention to foreign-born faculty members who work at 4-year colleges and universities in the United States. Examining data from the Survey of Doctorate Recipients, we looked at the mobility patterns of faculty members who held tenure-track faculty positions in 2003 and who responded to the survey again in 2013 (a 10-year time period). After examining different types of mobility, we found that the only significant difference was that, all things being equal, foreign-born faculty members were less likely to move into administration than U.S.-born faculty members. Foreign-born faculty members were no different from their U.S.-born counterparts in their mobility to other universities or to business/industry.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Educational Administration, Michigan State University, Erickson Hall, East Lansing, MI, 48824-1034, USA

    Dongbin Kim & Angie A. Belin

  2. Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, University of Kansas, 1450 Jayhawk Blvd, Lawrence, KS, 66045, USA

    Susan B. Twombly & Lisa Wolf-Wendel

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  1. Dongbin Kim
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Kim, D., Twombly, S.B., Wolf-Wendel, L. et al. Understanding Career Mobility of Professors: Does Foreign-Born Status Matter?. Innov High Educ 45, 471–488 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-020-09513-x

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